Ephesians Devotionals
Bob Morris
Doing What We Want (Ephesians 2:3-4)
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
Paul himself identifies with those he has just accused of formerly being the living dead. Doing what comes naturally is not doing what is good. “Feeling good” is never an adequate ethic, because our sinful nature (literally “flesh”) is a tyrant with insatiable cravings. When multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller was asked how much money it would take to satisfy a person, he answered astutely “Just a little more”. Amazingly, no matter how much we experience or have, we crave more. The only law of the Ten Commandments that relates to sin of the mind is the tenth, “You shall not covet…” It was this law among others that alerted Paul to the fact that he was spiritually dead and deserving of wrath (Romans 7: 7-11).
Transformation has to begin with the heart, and renewing of our minds (Rom. 12: 2). Long before we actually commit overt sin, our desires and thoughts have scouted out the territory. Jesus warned the Pharisees and his disciples (Matthew 15: 19-20) that what makes us unclean are the things that come from our hearts – evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. Slander and adultery and all the rest make their home inside us long before we express them. Kenneth Williams, counselor to many a missionary warns us that we don’t “fall” into sin; we slide into it. Every overt act of sin has a history of savoring thoughts about it. In explaining the difference between spontaneous wicked thoughts and culpable wicked thinking, Martin Luther said that we may not be able to stop birds flying over our heads but we certainly can prevent their making nests in our hair. Too often we tolerate the first pieces of straw that become a nest.
Because all of us began “by nature deserving wrath”, it is foolish to tell others that they are the walking dead, as if we are somehow deserving any better. Rather, as Markus Barth argues forcefully in The Broken Wall, Ephesians demands that we as the Church continue to express our solidarity with the world:
…according to Ephesians, the church is created and destined to be the visible, audible, tangible, and public manifestation of the life, love and power of the risen Christ. No apology can be made for a cult that stays behind stone, wooden or steel-and-glass walls when…Christ, the head of both the church and the world, [is] taken seriously…Instead of fleeing from contact with the wicked and disgusting world, and instead of cultivating unconcern, neutrality, or contempt for its drab or dramatic, sleek or tyrannical features and history, [the Church has] to go out and to stand, like witnesses in a trial before a court, outside, in the world. This is the Church: those who because of Christ’s mission are sent out…If there is a difference between those far and those nearing regard to life in temptation and sins, then it is only this: [the saints] confess the sins and the forgiveness of sins (1: 7) as chosen representatives of the world in the world (pages 154-167).
With Paul we must identify with the people who are now what we were. Christians must learn that worldliness is defined more by attitude than by association. The “eyes of our hearts” will determine whether we are worldly or not, much more than the people with whom we associate. Only as we understand and express our solidarity with the world, and simultaneously live out the forgiveness of our sins and our redemption in Christ can we fulfill Christ’s mission in the world.
Lord Jesus, sanctify us, and protect us from the Evil one even as you send us into the world just as you were. Forgive us for our spiritual arrogance, we pray, and grant us the ability to be in the world but not of it.
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